Trivia (71)

When The Shape of Water premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017, the screening was held in the Elgin Theatre. The interior scenes of the theater in the film were shot in the Elgin Theatre, so as the audience was watching the film, they were seeing the same theater on screen that they were sitting in.

Director Guillermo del Toro said about Sally Hawkins, "Not only was she the first choice, she was the only choice. I wrote the movie for Sally, I wrote the movie for Michael [Shannon]... Sally is - I wanted the character of Elisa to be beautiful, in her own way, not in a way that is like a perfume commercial kind of way. That you could believe that this character, this woman would be sitting next to you on the bus. But at the same time she would have a luminosity, a beauty, almost magical, ethereal."

Director Guillermo del Toro wrote lengthy backstories for each of the major characters, some of them reportedly running over forty pages long. After casting the roles, he offered them to the actors and said they could choose to utilize or ignore the backstories for their own character. The actors responded differently, with Richard Jenkins saying he ignored the backstory, stating, "The only thing that matters is what happens on screen," while Michael Stuhlbarg said he read the backstory voraciously and found it helpful in his performance.

The creature design is heavily inspired by the film Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). Michael Shannon's character even says they picked it up in the Amazon river in South America, which is the setting of The Creature from the film.

A poem is quoted at the end of the film, "Unable to perceive the shape of you, I find you all around me. Your presence fills my eyes with your love, it humbles my heart, for you are everywhere." The source has proven difficult to identify precisely, presumably because it was adapted by Guillermo del Toro, who said he found it in a bookshop during filming. Some have attributed the poem to the Persian poet Rumi, but it is his predecessor Hakim Sanai who is acknowledged in the end credits. The lines have been found to be similar to a section of Sanai's Walled Garden of Truth as translated by Priya Hemenway.

One day after completing her demanding underwater scenes for this film, Sally Hawkins flew to London to begin production on Paddington 2 (2017) - only to find out she would have to shoot underwater scenes for that film on the first day.

According to an interview with the National University of Mexico TV channel, Guillermo Del Toro said that if this film had flopped he would have retired from directing altogether. He stated as well that was also the case with Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and The Devil's Backbone (2001), due to the deep personal nature of these projects.

One of Octavia Spencer's favorite things about the screenplay was the fact that, by letting the main couple be mute, most of the dialogue comes from a black woman and a closeted gay man. In real life, they would both have experienced oppression during the 1960s setting of the film.

According to Danish DP Lausten, 95% of the film was shot in a studio. The limited exteriors required lots of rain, which had to be artificially created and warmed due to the chilly Canadian winter weather.

Director Guillermo del Toro first met Sally Hawkins at the 2014 Golden Globes and pitched the film to her while intoxicated. He says, "I was drunk and it's not a movie that makes you sound less drunk."

Most of the characters were written with the actors in mind. Octavia Spencer said her character was reminiscent of a collaboration between her roles in The Help (2011) and Hidden Figures (2016), and that she "would have played the desk if Guillermo del Toro had asked me to."

Esposito is a very common Italian surname that means "exposed" (Latin expositus, past participle of exponere "to place outside"), commonly denoting a foundling, left outside of an orphanage or a convent.

Several of the wallpapers used by set decorator Shane Vieau are commercially available patterns. For example, in the the hall between Elisa's and Giles's apartments, the patterned strip of wallpaper running down both walls is the "Chicago Frieze" pattern from Bradbury & Bradbury (albeit aged and otherwise color-treated by the film's production designers), which was designed in the style of the famed turn-of-the-twentieth-century American architect Louis Sullivan. Likewise, the semicircular repeating pattern covering several of the walls in Elisa's apartment is also a Bradbury and Bradbury wallpaper, this one titled "Eastlake." Its name and its fish scale-like appearance are both nods to the pervasive aquatic theme of this movie).

The American Film Institute selected it as one of the top 10 films of the year. At the 90th Academy Awards, the film received a leading 13 nominations, and won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Score and Best Production Design. It also won for Best Director and Best Original Score at the 75th Golden Globe Awards, on top of five other nominations. At the 71st British Academy Film Awards, the film received 12 nominations, including Best Film. Of those, it won two BAFTAs, for Production Design and Original Score, and Del Toro the David Lean Award for Direction.

In one scene, Michael Shannon's character asks, "What am I doing interviewing the help?" while referencing Sally Hawkins and Octavia Spencer's characters. Octavia Spencer famously won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Help (2011).

Director Guillermo del Toro worked on this film for several years and developed it even before he began production on Pacific Rim (2013). Eventually, he chose to direct this film instead of Pacific Rim Uprising (2018).

The colour green is a recurring theme in the film's aesthetic, often in a highly luminous form. The filling of the pies in Giles' fridge, the green Jell-O that is mentioned on two separate occasions, the uniform that the cleaners wear, the candy that Strickland is seen eating as well as his 'Teal' Cadillac. There are also various other background props such as towels, curtains and hand-soaps in the bathroom at the facility.

With the release of Maudie (2016) the same year, this marked the first time Sally Hawkins was the lead in two theatrical releases within the same year. In both films, she portrayed a woman with a disability. In Maudie (2016), her character suffers from a result of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and in The Shape of Water (2017), her character is mute.

A series of photos depicting artist James Jean's progress on the poster artwork can be found on his Instagram page. On two such photographs, reference photos of the creature can be seen in the corner, presumably unreleased stills from the actual movie.

This was the third collaboration between director Guillermo del Toro and composer Alexandre Desplat, but their first film with del Toro as director. The composer previously provided the music for the del Toro-produced animated movie Rise of the Guardians (2012), and he scored some of the del Toro-penned and produced animated series Trollhunters (2016).

The film was screened in the main competition section of the 74th Venice International Film Festival, where it premiered on August 31, 2017, and was awarded the Golden Lion for best film in the competition. It also screened at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.

While filming the scene where Michael Shannon drives to confront Sally Hawkins's character upon discovering she helped the creature escape, Shannon drove his car and stopped outside of theater, but he forgot to put the car in park. This resulted in the car rolling down the street and it collided with a decorative pole as well as a telephone pole, damaging the poles and Shannon's vehicle. The production team decided that take was so well done that they kept it in the film.

Elisa was left as a foundling baby by a river, is mute like the Amphibian Man, prefers to express her sexuality in water, and lives in a home with scale-print wallpaper. All these point to the fact that the marks on her neck were never scars, but are undeveloped gills, suggesting that she is descended from someone like the Amphibian Man.

The dance scene between the creature and Elisa is an homage to a dance scene between Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Follow the Fleet (1936). The unusual set piece is the same as the one seen when Fred sings "Let's Face the Music and Dance".

The color teal or green is featured throughout the film. Michael Shannon's character despises the color green. Jenkins's character's first painting is rejected as it needs to be green instead of red. Ironically, Shannon's character has terrible luck with this color as his car, which is teal, is destroyed and he is killed by the Amphibian Man, who is the exact color he hates.

Towards the end of the movie Dimitri (Michael Stuhlbarg) gets shot in the face creating a hole in his cheek, similar to what happened to Captain Vidal (played by Sergi Lopez), having his left cheek slashed open with a knife in Pan's Labyrinth (2006), also a Del Toro film.